(LONDON) — President Donald Trump held a high-stakes phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday as he continued his push for an end to Moscow’s 3-year-old invasion of Ukraine after last week’s peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey.
Following the calls, Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Monday that he remained confident that a deal between Russia and Ukraine would be reached soon.
“I think something’s going to happen. It’s a very, very big egos involved, I tell you, big egos involved. But I think something’s going to happen,” he said. “And if I thought that President Putin did not want to get this over with, I wouldn’t even be talking about it because I’d just pull out.”
Trump wouldn’t elaborate further on what would cause him to back away.
“I would say I do have a certain line, but I don’t want to say what the line is, because I think it makes the negotiation even more difficult than it is,” he said.
When questioned if he had asked Putin to meet with him during the call on Monday. Trump said “of course” he did.
“I said, ‘When are we going to end this, Vladimir?"” Trump said. “I said, ‘When are we going to end this bloodshed, this, this bloodbath?’ It’s a bloodbath. And, I do believe he wants to end it.”
In a post to his conservative social media platform earlier Monday, Trump said the call lasted two hours and that he believed it went “very well.”
Trump said Russia and Ukraine will “immediately” start negotiations toward a ceasefire, and that he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as several NATO leaders, after the call with Putin. He also said the Vatican “has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations.”
While talking to reporters on Monday, Trump said he thought having the talks at the Vatican would be “helpful.”
“There’s tremendous bitterness, anger, and I think maybe that could help some of that anger,” he said.
Putin, speaking to journalists in Sochi, claimed that he is willing to work on a “memorandum on a possible future peace agreement” with Ukraine, but did not elaborate on what that would look like.
“The question is, of course, that the Russian and Ukrainian sides show their maximum desire for peace and find the compromises that would suit all parties,” Putin added.
Trump had promised to end the war within 24 hours of taking office during the 2024 campaign, but both sides still appear far apart and Russia has only intensified strikes inside Ukraine.
ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott pressed White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier Monday if Trump would set a deadline for peace talks during his conversation with Putin. Leavitt said she wouldn’t get ahead of Trump on any specific timeline.
“His goal is to see a ceasefire and to see this conflict come to an end, and he’s grown weary and frustrated with both sides of the conflict,” she said of the president.
Leavitt also said she believed Trump “would certainly be open” to meeting with Putin but “let’s see how this call goes today.”
Renewed direct contact with Putin — the last publicly known direct phone call between the two presidents took place in February — comes after Trump’s hopes for peace talks progress in Istanbul were scuppered, Putin having declined to attend despite Zelenskyy’s invitation to do so.
The Istanbul talks were the first known meeting between representatives of Moscow and Kyiv since spring 2022, when the Turkish city hosted the final round of unsuccessful peace negotiations to end Russia’s unfolding invasion.
Once it became clear Putin would not attend, Trump told reporters of the peace effort, “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together, OK?”
“And obviously he wasn’t going to go,” Trump added. “He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there. And I don’t believe anything’s going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together, but we’re going to have to get it solved, because too many people are dying.”
On Monday, Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. is “more than open to walking away” from negotiations.
“We realize there’s a bit of an impasse here,” Vance told reporters, “and I think the president’s going to say to President Putin, ‘Look, are you serious? Are you real about this? Because the proposal from the United States has always been, look, there are a lot of economic benefits to thawing relations between Russia and the rest of the world, but you’re not going to get those benefits you keep on killing a lot of it is lot of innocent people."”
It’s not clear what concessions, if any, the United States has demanded of Russia. Trump and other top officials have said Ukraine will have to forgo NATO membership and likely concede some territory occupied by Russia in order to bring to the conflict to an end.
Trump’s repeated threats of further sanctions on Russia have so far failed to precipitate any notable shift in Moscow’s war goals — which, according to public statements by officials, still include Ukraine’s ceding of four regions — which Russian forces do not fully control — plus Crimea, as well as a permanent block on Kyiv’s accession to NATO.
Putin said Sunday that any peace deal with Ukraine should “eliminate the causes that triggered this crisis” and “guarantee Russia’s security.”
Kyiv and its European backers are still pushing for a full 30-day ceasefire, during which time they say peace negotiations can take place. Moscow has thus far refused to support the proposal, suggesting that all Western military aid to Ukraine would have to stop as part of any ceasefire.
Trump on Monday suggested that trade with the U.S. could be a motivator for both countries in peace talks.
“Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath” is over, and I agree,” Trump wrote in his social media post on Monday. “There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country.”
Asked by a reporter Monday why he hasn’t increased sanctions on Russia yet, Trump said he believes there’s a “chance of getting something done, and if you do that, you can also make it much worse.”
“But there could be a time when that’s going to happen,” he added.
Contacts between U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials continued after the end of the talks in Istanbul. On Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Rubio welcomed a prisoner exchange agreement reached during the Istanbul meeting and emphasized Trump’s call for an immediate ceasefire.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on Monday wrote on X that the Istanbul meeting highlighted a “stark difference” between Moscow and Kyiv. “Ukraine is forward-looking, focused on the full and immediate ceasefire to kickstart the real peace process.”
“To the contrary, Russia is completely focused on the past, rejecting the ceasefire and instead talking constantly about the 2022 Istanbul meetings, attempting to make the same absurd demands as three years ago,” the foreign minister said.
“This is yet another reason why pressure on Russia must be increased,” Sybiha added. “Moscow must now understand the consequences of impeding the peace process.”
Meanwhile, long-range strikes by both sides continued. On Sunday night into Monday morning, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 112 drones into the country, 76 of which were shot down or jammed. Damage was reported in five regions of Ukraine, the air force said in a post to Telegram.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Monday morning that its forces had downed 35 Ukrainian drones overnight.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie, William Gretsky, Tanya Stukalova and Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
